University of California, Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering Awards Tenure to Dr. Bethany Goldblum

Prof. Goldblum received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2007 studying the validity of the surrogate ratio method in determining fission cross sections.  Following this, she was appointed as a Clare Boothe Luce Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC  Berkeley, served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, and then came back to Cal as a research engineer and established the Bay Area Neutron Group (BANG).   Following her return, Dr. Goldblum worked with Prof. Jasmina Vujic to establish the first NNSA/NA-22 sponsored research consortium, the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium (NSSC), serving most recently as the Executive Director.  She helped lead the NSSC through three successful re-competitions, taking on the lead PI in the NSSC4, which was just awarded last month.  

In 2020 she was appointed to a Career Staff Scientist position in the Nuclear Data Group in the Nuclear Science Division at LBNL, leading the NucScholar program in Natural Language Processing for Data Evaluation and leading a research team at the 88-Inch Cyclotron that established the first-ever database of experimentally determined organic scintillator properties.   

In July 2023 Prof. Goldblum transitioned to a shared appointment at UC Berkeley, continuing her research at LBNL and teaching courses in nonproliferation and nuclear policy.  In 2024 she also took on the Head Graduate Advisor role in the Nuclear Engineering department.   

congratulations to Prof. Goldblum for this well-earned achievement!